~ HOW TO COPE WITH THE HEAT ~

It’s been an interesting and intense time of late with the higher than usual summer temperatures and the boys becoming fractious towards the end of the holidays. Adolescence has beset the youngest child, and he’s monstrously tired all the time, not only that he lies around complaining about being too hot and too tired. Apparently all he can do is online gaming or binge-watching anime on Netflix. He tries asking for things, like can I bring him a drink or a snack, from the couch. That’s when I growl, and he says, “Okay, I’ll do it” with a groaning voice as if he was dying. I get that the hormones racing through his body are raising his body temperature and that this is our hottest summer, yet there’s a limit to even the most patient parent’s Zen.

“Don’t you feel hot?” asked the youngest child, plaintively.

“Yes,” said I.

“Well, how do you handle it?” he asked.

“I try not to focus on it but put my attention onto other things.”

“Huh?”

The constant baking temperatures test the patience levels. The boys have been grumpy, and they snap back a lot. We have been having difficulty sleeping, though we each sleep with a fan.

An hour after we’d gone to bed last night, a knock sounded at my door. A weary voice on the other side, that wavers these days between high and low as if uncertain where to settle, said, “I’m boiling, I can’t sleep. Can you help?”

I got up and hugged him. It was like hugging an oven. The youngest is having hormonal surges – just as I am each night when menopausal hot flashes wake me up – his body at fourteen-and-a-half is aflame with hormones. I felt sorry for him. We did a few things that helped his core body temperature come down and he could sleep.

As there is some concern about the “heat wave” predicted for New Zealand this weekend, when temperatures may reach 30 degrees, I thought I might share a few tips on cooling down.

“Temperatures nationwide are above normal on Sunday, not just by a few degrees but in many regions by over 10C as air flows from Australia and the sub-tropics combine to move down over parts of New Zealand,” according to NewsHub.

Here are some ways to cope with the heat

Go downstairs to the basement if you have one as they will always be cooler than upstairs.

Have cold baths or showers

Try to avoid getting sunburned during the day.

Close the curtains on the sunny side of the house.

Don’t open windows facing the sun during the day, open them at night once the temperatures come down

Make trays of ice and hold a cube in your mouth.

Drink plenty of water

Drink iced water. Put your water bottle in the freezer until it’s nearly frozen and then take out and once it melts take small sips, it’s effective for bringing body temperature down.

Apply cold packs which are cheaply available from stores like Pak ‘n’ Save

My friend said that they were saving the money to have air conditioning installed. We have air con though I never use it as it’s too expensive to run, but it’s a backup plan if things get desperate. However, if you don’t have air con at home, borrow other peoples. We hang out in the malls, the libraries, the museum, the public places that are air-conditioned during the day to cool down.

As temperatures continue to climb, we must think further ahead. I plan to get a quote for sun awnings off both sides of the house to cover the verandas and also get quotes for wooden shutters for the windows. I hear getting the windows triple glazed is best. Triple glazing keeps the heat out and in winter keeps the heat in, however, that is top dollar.

My youngest tells me, “This results from global warming, the seasons will be more extreme, summers will be hotter and winters will be colder.” Summers are more scorching, I haven’t noticed winters changing overly, although weather has been unpredictable with freak storms, floods, and so on. I remember reading that Europe and America had heat waves last summer. It’s an undeniable fact that conditions are changing, therefore on a global level, we have to find ways of responding to climate change.

On a personal level, there are also many things we can do to embrace change and deal with what is happening positively. I want to think ahead, find solutions for my family, and get on with living life. How about you?

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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The more you accept your life, the more your life improves. ~ Unknown

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~ THE IMPORTANCE OF SLEEP ~

If you’re like me, you may have gotten busier over the last few weeks. The chores stack up, things get overgrown. It’s the end of the year, jobs need resolution, deadlines loom and time pressure mounts. The thought of the impending festive season and adding even more items to the “to do” list strikes a note of panic into the heart. For some, the financial issues at this time of the year become overwhelming, and the thought of getting together with the family can be fraught. I have a friend who calls this ‘the suicide season.’ Add the fact that once stress sets in it can reduce the duration and quality of sleep, and you’ve got a disaster walking.

Without sleep, we cannot function properly. With the right amount of quality shuteye, then we get to enjoy the benefits as it helps prevent heart disease and weight problems, and boosts the immune system.

Without sleep, you end up the walking dead, or ‘tired and wired’ as my friend put it when she saw me the other day.

I had been overdoing it in the last month or so working long hours to finish my book. About three weeks ago, I began to get abdominal discomfort which felt almost like a mild hernia or similar. I was having sleep broken by three hours of wakefulness a night.

It’s hard to be gracious when you don’t get enough sleep. I lost all sense of political correctness, courtesy, and I lost my sense of humour. It made me impatient with the kids. This created some inner turmoil and struggle over my feelings around myself as a mother. It gets complicated. However, I have come to know that I absolutely have to have adequate sleep to function as a parent and especially as a creative person.

By the end of this week, I felt a deadly fatigue and yet so hyped internally I was running on pure adrenalin. I couldn’t slow down and felt I was close to burnout.

I went to see a friend yesterday morning who is a healer. We’ve known each other a few years. My friend asked how I was and we talked at length. Then she spoke about the wisdom of slowing down and attending to self care. ‘To nurture our families, we need to take care of ourselves first.’ She advised two meditations of a twenty-minute duration daily, morning and afternoon.

I’d only recently seen an experiment on the BBC show, Trust Me I’m A Doctor, on the benefits of meditation. They tested people before and after several weeks meditating daily. All participants showed improved health and an improvement in a sense of their overall well-being, and they were sleeping better.

It is vital to our health to get enough sleep each night. The nine recognized benefits associated with getting a good night’s sleep are, lower risk of heart disease, lower inflammation, a stronger immune system, better productivity, greater social/emotional intelligence, lower weight gain risk, improved calorie regulation, better athletic performance, preventing depression.

For the last few years, I’ve been starting each day with a ten-minute meditation, and I had thought that was enough. But I was also willing to do anything to sleep well and for the pains to go away. I said I would meditate twice daily for twenty minutes. I’m only on my second day and I already feel significantly better, and last night, as promised, I slept like a baby. This has given me hope for the future. With adequate sleep under my belt each day I can conquer mountains.

The average person needs seven to nine hours sleep a night to recover and repair the body. Kids need more, newborns need seventeen hours and kids need at least ten to twelve hours of shuteye a night. Usually, we need less sleep as we get older. But if you’re having difficulty sleeping, experiments have shown there are several things people can do to improve sleep quality: make sure you sleep in a dark bedroom, turn off devices and televisions, swap the caffeine or alcohol before bed for a warm milky drink, spend time in moving about each day, and reduce stress levels by exercise, therapy, or some other means.

If all else fails, why not try meditation? I have to say, I feel the best today that I have in a long time. Have you ever tried meditation?

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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 “We are more powerful than we have been lead to believe. Walk tall in your power and never give it to an outside source. True authority comes from within.”- R. Cefalu

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~ How to Survive Sleep Deprivation ~

My status update on Facebook of a week or so ago asked whether sleep deprivation was ever used as a form of torture. It was an earnest question. Because having experienced insomnia brought on by menopause in the last four years; I have come to realize how important sleep is to my well being.

Getting enough hours of shuteye each night is essential to my health, and to my mental health and emotional wellness.

I’ve noticed myself getting annoyed with people out in public, I have little mini road rages in my car, and I don’t give way with a smile as often. I’ve done stupid things like putting the phone in the fridge, and the milk in the freezer, and I’ve forgotten appointments.

This has made me aware that for me to have a sunny attitude and happy interchanges with people, I require a certain topping up of the tank. When there are only a few hours sleep under the belt, the tank’s at half full.

They say most adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep a night.

Women need twenty minutes more than men, and once they’re awake generally find it harder to fall back to sleep than men.

In the last four years, I’ve been finding it more difficult to fall asleep again if I’m disturbed in the night. I’m still raising my two younger boys, and sometimes, they wake up, needing me for some reason. The end result: I’m sometimes getting through my days on three to four hours sleep.

Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post  says women aren’t getting enough sleep and once famously called sleep ‘a feminist issue.’ I see her point. I do find everything harder to do on less sleep, let alone attaining my “full potential.”

Instead of relishing the day, I’m battling the day. I can’t get ahead or enjoy the moment.

My grandmother, rest her soul, only ever slept three hours a night. When I asked her why, she said she’d done so her whole adult life. She didn’t need more than that. Me, I need a good nine hours a night to be at my best.

They say that sleeping a whole seven hours at a stretch is a relatively modern innovation, and that in the past, people usually slept two or three hours, got up for a spell and then went back to bed. This was one of the suggestions I heard, to get up and do something relaxing in a low light, like yoga or meditation, before returning to bed.

It’s about training the mind and memory to attach wakefulness to other areas of the house, and to associate restfulness with the bedroom.

The last four years have been a bit of a struggle, as I’ve been barely functioning on auto-pilot each day, after sleeping a few hours.

I had to look into different things I could do to assist me on the path back to the land of the sandman.

The first thing I did was go to see a medical herbalist. The herbal tinctures she prescribed were instantly effective, and wonderfully natural and non-toxic yet, the price, exorbitant. After a few successful months, I realized the budget couldn’t sustain the price of the tinctures, so I quit. I had to do what I could at home to help myself get the Z’s.

It’s all still a matter of trial and error, but at least here’s somewhere to start.

*Top Tips for Better Sleep*

*Take regular exercise each day, aerobic and weight training can cut down the number of times you wake in the night

*Carbs for dinner give the body a peak in the levels of insulin which helps you to nod off

*Try to establish a routine bedtime, as the body can set a pattern for unwinding at that time

*Switch off all sources of light in the room, the darker the better for production of adequate levels of melatonin, the hormone that helps us stay asleep

* Play slow soft music; it’s been found that music with a rhythmic rate of around 60 bpm syncs with the resting heart rate

* Meditation or relaxation/breathing exercises prior to bedtime help release the stress of the day and detach from the dramas

I’ve learned the hard way to make sleep a priority. How about you?

Talk to you later.

Keep Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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The one who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. Those who walk alone are likely to find themselves in places no one has ever been before. ~ Albert Einstein

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**with ref: the special report, Are you getting enough sleep, by Alex Davies